Conference expansion discussions used to be private, but much has changed

June 6, 2010|By Andrea Adelson, From the Press Box

The time seemed right for change. After all, the college football landscape was evolving. Economics were playing an ever-increasing role in athletics. Other conferences began making moves, too, making it hard to sit and do nothing.

It was 1993.

That year, the Big Eight began ramping up talks with four Southwest Conference teams, courting them with face-to-face meetings and phone calls. While there had been reports of a potential alignment between the two leagues, the discussions were kept largely private. It wasn't until February 1994 that Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech announced they would help form the Big 12.

Compare that to today.

Thanks to the Internet, 24-hour news cycle and voracious blog-o-sphere, speculation, leaks and erroneous reports have defined the latest round of conference expansion talks in collegiate sports. Just this past week, a Rivals website broke the bombshell news that the Pac-10 was considering adding Texas and five other Big 12 schools.

Fans have had to wade through one report after another, wondering what is true and what is not.

Back in the early 1990s, many of these conference-altering talks were never reported.

"We had private discussions almost totally," said former Kansas State athletic director Max Urick, involved in the Big Eight-SWC talks. "There was a representative group from the athletic directors and presidents that communicated under an agreement that we can best make progress on this if we don't let get things get inflamed or let anyone overreact and keep the discussion civil and non-threatening."

Former University of Colorado chancellor Jim Corbridge, who helped guide talks with the Southwest Conference, said the Big Eight was able to do internal studies on which schools from the SWC would best fit into a new Big 12 conference. He was able to have face-to-face meetings at Texas and several other schools without word leaking out.

He cannot recall reporters being at conference spring meetings or presidential meetings, either. Corbridge called that era "the dark ages as far as information exchange was concerned."

"We just went about our business," Corbridge said. "Nobody asked. At that time, we didn't have the same national debate on conference expansion."

Indeed, the SEC had taken Arkansas from the SWC, leaving that league on shaky ground. The Big Ten added Penn State in 1992 and the Pac-10 looked at growing as well. But conference expansion failed to galvanize national attention the way it has today.

The increasing scrutiny on conferences and athletic programs, and the parsing of every word in every comment has become a near daily ritual since the Big Ten announced last December it would begin exploring expansion.

Leaks have come from athletic departments, conference officials and universities. David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at USC, is hardly surprised this has happened. Because of the changing media, he notes that officials involved in expansion discussions have an opportunity to place information to gauge reaction.

"When it comes to conference expansion there are so many parties involved and impacted by it that it is nearly impossible to protect the integrity and privacy of the discussions," Carter said in an e-mail message. "The ability to take your message directly to your constituencies — even if that means doing covertly — is inevitable.

"There really is no way to protect information these days if any of the stakeholders want to strategically position their messages in an attempts to gain more traction for their position or perspective."

Urick believes it has to do with something else.

"It's about power and influence," Urick said. "I think that's what's driving a lot of public discussion and open comments. It's what certain schools want to be perceived as, and maybe the perception of a certain school is different than what it was previously so they'll talk about throwing their weight around by making public comments."

How would things have been different during Big 12 talks if the current atmosphere existed then?

"I'm not sure we could have been as successful as we were in developing a step-by-step progression and before we said, "This is it. This is what we're going to do,'" Urick said.